Baudelaire is little known and much misunderstood in England. Only one
English writer has ever done him justice, or said anything adequate
about him. As long ago as 1862 Swinburne introduced Baudelaire to
English readers: in the columns of the _Spectator_, it is amusing to
remember. In 1868 he added a few more words of just and subtle praise
in his book on Blake, and in the same year wrote the magnificent elegy
on his death, _Ave atque Vale._ There have been occasional outbreaks'
of irrelevant abuse or contempt, and the name of Baudelaire (generally
misspelled) is the journalist's handiest brickbat for hurling at random
in the name of respectability. Does all this mean that we are waking
up, over here, to the consciousness of one of the great literary forces
of the age, a force which has been felt in every other country but ours?
It would be a useful influence for us. Baudelaire desired perfection,
and we have never realised that perfection is a thing to aim at. He
only did what he could do supremely well, and he was in poverty all
his life, not because he would not work, but because he would work
only at certain things, the things which he could hope to do to his
own satisfaction. Of the men of letters of our age he was the most
scrupulous. He spent his whole life in writing one book of verse (out
of which all French poetry has come since his time), one book of prose
in which prose becomes a fine art, some criticism which is the sanest,
subtlest, and surest which his generation produced, and a translation
which is better than a marvellous original. What would French poetry
be to-day if Baudelaire had never existed? As different a thing from
what it is as English poetry would be without Rossetti. Neither of
them is quite among the greatest poets, but they are more fascinating
than the greatest, they influence more minds. And Baudelaire was an
equally great critic. He discovered Poe, Wagner, and Manet. Where
even Sainte-Beuve, with his vast materials, his vast general talent
for criticism, went wrong in contemporary judgments, Baudelaire was
infallibly right. He wrote neither verse nor prose with ease, but
he would not permit himself to write either without inspiration. His
work is without abundance, but it is without waste. It is made out
of his whole intellect and all his nerves. Every poem is a train of
thought and every essay is the record of sensation. This "romantic"
had something classic in his moderation, moderation which becomes at
times as terrifying as Poe's logic. To "cultivate one's hysteria" so
calmly, and to affront the reader _(Hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable,
mon frère)_ as a judge rather than as a penitent; to be a casuist in
confession; to be so much a moralist, with so keen a sense of the
ecstasy of evil: that has always bewildered the world, even in his
own country, where the artist is allowed to live as experimentally as
he writes. Baudelaire lived and died solitary, secret, a confessor of
sins who has never told the whole truth, _le mauvais moine_ of his own
sonnet, an ascetic of passion, a hermit of the brothel.
To understand, not Baudelaire, but what we can of him, we must read,
not only the four volumes of his collected works, but every document
in Crépet's _Œuvres Posthumes,_ and above all, the letters, and
these have only now been collected into a volume, under the care of
an editor who has done more for Baudelaire than any one since Crépet.
Baudelaire put into his letters only what he cared to reveal of himself
at a given moment: he has a different angle to distract the sight of
every observer; and let no one think that he knows Baudelaire when he
has read the letters to Poulet-Malassis, the friend and publisher, to
whom he showed his business side, or the letters to la Présidente, the
touchstone of his _spleen et idéal,_ his chief experiment in the higher
sentiments, Some of his carefully hidden virtues peep out at moments,
it is true, but nothing that everybody has not long been aware of.
We hear of his ill-luck with money, with proof-sheets, with his own
health. The tragedy of the life which he chose, as he chose all things
(poetry, Jeanne Duval, the "artificial paradises") deliberately, is
made a little clearer to us; we can moralise over it if we like. But
the man remains baffling, and will probably never be discovered.
As it is, much of the value of the book consists in those glimpses
into his mind and intentions which he allowed people now and then to
see. Writing to Sainte-Beuve, to Flaubert, to Soulary, he sometimes
lets out, through mere sensitiveness to an intelligence capable of
understanding him, some little interesting secret. Thus it is to
Sainte-Beuve that he defines and explains the origin and real meaning
of the _Petits Poèmes en Prose: Faire cent bagatelles laborieuses qui
exigent une bonne humeur constante (bonne humeur nécessaire, même
pour traiter des sujets tristes), une excitation bizarre qui a besoin
de spectacles, de foules, de musiques, de réverbères même, voilà ce
que j'ai voulu faire!_ And, writing to some obscure person, he will
take the trouble to be even more explicit, _us_ in this symbol of
the sonnet: _Avez-vous observé qu'un morceau de ciel aperçu par un
soupirail, ou entre deux cheminées, deux rochers, ou par une arcade,
donnait une idée plus profonde de l'infini que le grand panorama vu du
haut d'une montagne?_ It is to another casual person that he speaks out
still more intimately (and the occasion of his writing is some thrill
of gratitude towards one who had at last done "a little justice," not
to himself, but to Manet): _Eh bien! on m'accuse, moi, d'imiter Edgar
Poe! Savez-vous pourquoi j'ai si patiemment traduit Poe? Parce qu'il
me resemblait. La première fois que j'ai ouvert un livre de lui, j'ai
vu avec épouvante et ravissement, non seulement des sujets rêvés par
moi, mais des phrases, pensées par moi, et écrites par lui, vingt ans
auparavant._ It is in such glimpses as these that we see something of
Baudelaire in his letters.
1906.